National Literary Awards

Published by Lucas Stewart

“The winners of the National Literary Award for books published in 2011 were announced on November 22, with 13 honourees named by a judging committee working under the Ministry of Information.

Prizes were meant to be given in 16 categories, but the selection committee decided that the entries in the Novel, Youth Literature and English-Language Fiction categories failed to meet specified selection criteria.

“We have read all the literature published in the 2011 calendar year, including comedy, satire and fantasy. We define the criteria for each category, and if works don’t meet these standards, we reject them and select the best from the remaining books,” said poet U Myo Tun, secretary of National Literary Award Selection Committee.

The committee picked the 13 winners from more than 2400 books in all genres. Of these, 827 were novels but none were deemed sufficient to warrant the literary prize.”